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Numa Numa - Japan Edition
Alice in Wonderland Illustrations by Chris Appelhans
Maxim's Top Ten Video Game Toilets
 People know that abroad McDonald's has great toilets and plan their sightseeing trips accordingly. But computer games? Maxim guides us through video games' ten best restrooms. Labels: english
A Collection of Soviet Music
Marches, odes and other cool aural legacy of the Evil Empire at sovmusic.ruLabels: english
Defensive
 Here's what a defended MSc thesis looks like, in three acid-free copies. 70+ pages in single space, Times New Roman 12pt, 200+ references and 6 months of life. Labels: english
Home Improvement, Part IV
The apartment is almost done. More pictures to come when the mess is cleaned up, but that's what one of the rooms looks like.   Labels: english
Stalker On Pre-Order
 Can't believe the wait is almost over: STALKER is on pre-order on Amazon. It's a $50-game that will cost hundreds of bucks in hardware upgrade for my PC to be able to run it. Labels: english
Home Improvement, Part III
Done painting ceilings, walls, and part of the trim. Tomorrow we will have contractors sanding the floor. Here's the progress on the bathroom so far. Before:  After:   Labels: english
Home Improvement, Part II
 Jotted down a floor plan in Visio (click pic to zoom in) before heading over to Home Depot to buy paint. Since all rooms will be done in different colors, figuring out the amount of paint took forever. Not drawn to exact scale, but pretty accurate. Also gives you an idea of what walls will be what color. We bought Behr paint, attracted by their great interactive tool for color coordination. It turns out it lays down nicely, covering almost everything in one coat even without priming. Images of our progress tomorrow -- we have quite a few walls done already, but taking an academic break today. De-cockroaching went strangely. I got six cans of fogger, which filled the apartment entirely, and let the stuff ventilate overnight. No cockroaches on the floor next morning, though. The only insect we found was a dead fly. Hope it's because there were none to start with. Labels: english
Retro Ads for Japanese Psychiatric Drugs
Home Improvement, Part I
We are signing a lease tomorrow on a rather large 3-bedroom apartment. We got it for a very good price but in return we are responsible for rennovating its entire 1500 square feet. We have two weeks to get at least the floors done. Here's what we've got:  Spacious and sunny living room with totally worn out hardwood floors and walls in a desperate need of paint. Two bedrooms, #2 and #3, are across the long hallway from each other, #3 is connected to the living room with double sliding doors.  The bathroom looks horrible and will probably be among the biggest expenses. Besides washing everything, we need a new floor (tile? vinyl?), the ceiling needs to be fixed and walls -- painted. I think we'll make it pink.  The kitchen is big and doesn't look bad at all. The most urgent job is to paint the walls behind the counters, stove and fridge, as well as those ugly door frames.  Dining room is a nice extra.  Bedroom #1. Looks the worst of all three. We'll need to pick a bright calm color to make it look bigger and lighter. First steps: 1. Kitchen clean-up. The fridge stinks like hell and there are food crumbs all over the cabinets. 2. De-cockroaching. We plan to bomb the place with Raid Fogger -- the weapon ultimate of mass cockroach destruction. This should be a fun project and I'll keep the journal updated on our progress. Any furniture/decoration tips are welcome. Labels: english
Four Long Weeks of World Cup
The Invisible Hands of Convergence
 Made and retouched a pic for a client presentation on media convergence and new ad forms. Click the pick for the full view, it makes a cool desktop. Labels: english
Moldova's New Logo
sourceUpdate [June 19, 2006]. I have been trying to remember what this new logo looks like. This is what: the logo of the 9Rules blog network.  And the MSN butterfly, too:  Labels: english
Rethinking Everything
This is a pipeline of raw stuff that will eventually be sorted and posted under the "Rethinking" title on AdLab. A shopping bag for Blush.
A direct mailing piece for Dunlop. Copy: "Sticks brilliantly when wet."
A business card for a Karate school. Source: Creative Criminal. A direct mail piece soliciting donations sent during Christmas season. Source: Creative Criminal.
Labels: english
Communist Mutants From Space
 "Vaporize the Communist Mutants before they overrun your home planet." 1982, Arcadia Corp for Atari 2600. Source. Labels: english
Press Badge
 I faked my first press badge when I was 14 to get into some concert. It wasn't 100-percent groundless; I was writing for a school stengazeta (a large hand-written poster with news and opinions) so that gave me some authority (I thought) to claim admittance to events. I then worked for FlashNews, an email newsletter in college, and did my own press badges to get into pubs without paying cover, with occasional success. When working in Sofia, I used a home-made badge saying I was a foreign reporter (and I was, kind of) to get into conferences. I then worked for Reuters and had a bona-fide press card, but the events it was good for weren't all that fun. Yesterday, I got my first press pass that was based on my highly successful blog to get into the Advertising in Games conference in New York. Now, how cool is that? Labels: english
Twilight of Career
 Today was the last day of my exciting two-year career as the MIT skate guard. Labels: english
Flashback: Microsoft's Webpage In 1994
The Fat Lady Sings
 The pic and the title come from Advergirl, since one doesn't really work without the other. Labels: english
Favorite Sports Advertised: Vodka and Scrabble
Sunsets of The Second Life
 To those who say gamers should get a life: if the real life was fun, I would not have been logged on. Labels: english
US Skater Wears CCCP Jacket
 "Wearing a jacket of the former Soviet Union, Johnny Weir warms up before the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in January." USA Today / APLabels: english
Good To Go
One of the best pieces of advertising commentary in ages: The only thing that's "good to go" is your worthless existence.
My hatred of Taco Bell's advertising campaigns is well-documented. Aside from Toyota, I don't know if any other major company has struck out so poorly for such an extended period of time. Most commercials suck, but Taco Bell consistently bottoms out the playing field so deeply that it ceases to exist as a vertical axis and actually transmogrifies into a black-holed vortex of suckitude.
-- This Is What We Do Now
Labels: english
Branded Coke TV Set
 Found this wonderful German Coke-branded TV set from the 70s on eBay. Labels: english
Film Strips of Shared Childhood
 Having lived in one foreign country or another for ten years now, I keep coming back to one question – what it is that makes it hard for an immigrant to blend into the landscape of his new country. This question is not so much about whether the hosts begin to perceive you as one of them as it is about whether you perceive them as a part of you. It is like when you buy new clothes, and you like how they are new, clean and crisp; and yet it takes time for them to start feeling as comfortable and invisible as those old sweats you’ve been wearing since the first episode of Friends. Some countries break this wall and you feel in them as if you have lived there forever, some fail and remain an expensive but forever restrictive Sunday suit even as the novelty wears out. The answer lies beyond the physical space, of course, and even beyond the language. Shared culture, too, is only part of the answer, for contemporary collective cultural practices of the Western world differ from one country to another no more than they vary among city neighborhoods. I wake up in Sofia, take a cab to the airport, get on the plane, land in Logan, take a cab to my dorm within the span of a single consciousness. At least on the surface, nothing has changed; the cabs are the same and Brittney Spears on the radio is the same, billboards peddle the same Coke in the familiar two-liter bottles. My TV plays the same CNN; a Big Mac on Mass Ave tastes and feels just like the one on Slaveikov Square. Even the jet lag conjures nothing but an aftertaste of last week’s crunch time in the office. With clothes that smell of airplane food being the only indication of the distance just traveled, culture shock ceases to be a function of space. It should not have been harder to make friends here than it was there, yet it was. Same bars, same drinks, same gossip; same friendliness and really a lot in common, yet a chasm in between. This chasm is not culture, or more precisely, not present culture. It's the past, but not the type of collective historical past upon which nations construct their mythological identity. It is a nearly immediate, a very recent past, as collective as it is individually intimate, the past also known as childhood. A childhood viewed from the distance of passed years is not a continuum; it's an assortment of colorful shreds - a flash here, a smell there, a sound maybe. These shreds make up a childhood DNA code. Regardless of having been born and having grown up time zones apart from each other, my friends remain kindergarten buddies, sharing a collective childhood. "Do you remember diafilms?" I asked them the other day, typing away at my instant messenger with a buddy roster of nearly two hundred and a VIP friend list of merely a dozen. "Of course!" they would answer. Diafilms, a bit of the common DNA, are fairy tale comics printed on short strips of film, approximately 30 frames total, one panel per frame. A diafilm, immutably linear, projected on a white surface through a hand-cranked magic lantern, is a technological cousin of a slide and a grandfather of PowerPoint presentations. Unlike more traditional comics, diafilms had their all captions and dialogs in the bottom of the panel. For us living in a pre-VCR era, diafilms were our movies on demand, and demand we did. My family had an elaborate set of rules regarding show-times; very quickly, diafilms replaced traditional bedtime fairy tales and were my irrevocable reward for being good throughout the day. Around nine, mom would goad me to bed, and programming negotiations began. A diafilm couldn't be shown twice in the same week; and on my good days I would be rewarded with longer strips. A few of the strips were of double length, that is 60 or 70 frames, which easily could mean a whopping whole hour of magic; those strips were reserved for the occasions when mom had to compensate for not showing up the night before. I learned to read when I was five and switched to books some time later; the diafilms were for the illiterate younger me. The text had to be read out loud and thus my mom was instrumental to the success of the performance. For it was a performance: the most convincing voice-overs I’ve ever heard were moms' lines for the big grey wolf. When the stage was set – that is, the bed was made and I was in – the lights would go off, and the show would begin. Like millions of other apartments in the country, ours had wallpaper all around, so the diafilms were projected on the ceiling, very convenient for the authorities to keep the spectators in bed. We had our commercial breaks, too. Half-way through the show, dad would burst in to peddle warm milk or vitamins or other goods praising their obvious advantages for one’s health and wealth, and well being of the humankind in general. Every once in a while, the pitch was complemented with a story how dad, now a film maker, had set up the first outdoor theater in their town to project and read diafilms to the local kids, charging a random nickel, a frog, or an equivalent in other boys’ currencies. That was in the late 1950s, when he was barely 10. Unlike movies, diafilms were rarely discussed for they were not a socially synchronous experience; unlike today’s DVDs, diafilm releases were not widely announced or anticipated. Nor were diafilms a pull medium. The film containers where bland and so unattractive to kids - at least in contrast with today’s gaudy packaging - that it must have been our parents who chose them for us. For other kids, as I learned much later, the circumstances of their diafilm experience varied. Some would watch them as today’s kids watch TV – on their own during daytime, window shades down. We even had "multimedia" diafilms - film strips that came together with stories recorded on a vinyl disk. For others, diafilm shows were a party ingredient, with the oldest kid doing the reading, a distraction their parents would put together to keep the children occupied and the adults undisturbed. Yet everyone I talked to remembers diafilms as something special, almost magical. Unlike the plug-and-play VCRs of today, diafilms always required special ceremonial preparation: deciding on what to use for a screen, seating the audience, darkening the room, adjusting focus, appointing the reader. Few of us now remember what the strips were about, apart from a handful of stories made famous elsewhere and then retold on static celluloid. But the magic of total immersion in a dream world remains, as remains the smell of hot metal, the screech of the crank and the memory of a white sheet on the wall. Boston, 2004
Diafilms are still made by Diafilm Studio (site in Russian).
Labels: english
AUBG: Mission Possible
photo: MagratWhat mission? Nurturing future leaders does not count as a mission—future leaders are a by-product. Liberal arts? Providing liberal arts education is not the University’s mission—it is one of the Blagoevgrad’s downtown edifice. "American University in Bulgaria" shines proudly off its sides over the town. What a confusing misnomer. The real University is not brick and mortar, glass and marble. It's not in any of the classrooms, labs, gyms, dorms or even canteens. Not exactly. AUBG is in the hearts. There it teaches. There it lives. AUBG's true mission is to reverse the story of Babel, re-blend the tongues of the ever-warring region into one Absolute Esperanto. Its mission is to bring together young people dispersed and locked in their hundred (nevermind their eighteen) years of ethnic, cultural, historic loneliness. Its mission is to amalgamate an Über Nation without wars and hatred, where Knowledge is an elected President and where Friendship holds the monopoly of power. In that AUBG has never failed. I remember myself on my first day: a foreign freshman stuffed in a room with three Bulgarians, not even knowing how to nod correctly in this strange country. My Bulgarian has crystallized out of the Bulgarian-English-Russian-Moldavian lingual soup my roommates and I devoured. A young Kazakh woman speaks Serbian to a Montenegrin, watching his jaw drop. Another, a Bulgarian, converses in Bucharest with its natives. A Romanian starts singing along to Russian music. Making grammar mistakes? To hell with mistakes! Understanding each other—that's what matters. "Te dashuroj, te obicham, te iubesc, ljubam te, yes kez si'rumem, liubliu tebia, volim te, szeretlek te'ged." Can one really mispronounce "I love you"? We moved beyond understanding, slowly developing a common system of symbols. The landmarks are equally familiar and dear to all, regardless of age, sex or origin: Underground, hiking, Bansko, beer, MUD, IRC, deadline at 11.59 p.m. Sunday, dead computers, Volga’s lobby, JMC, Pegasus, a Chavdar bus, Napoli. Banichka is now an international word. So is otpor. AUBG kept converting ethnicities into all possible permutations: Belarusians into Bulgarians, Moldovans into Albanians, Armenians into Macedonians. We became a whole, throwing our nations' squabbles and politicians aside. Instead of the solemn building, the University’s seal should've featured a canteen scene: a Kosovar hugging a Serb over CNN’s bombing coverage. AUBG is not about what others, the untouched, think it is. Liberal arts, English, computers, books, Western philosophy, black leather-clad diploma printed in a gothic font make only a fraction of the university’s true unique meaning. After all, this quality academic matter is similarly available elsewhere. What AUBG truly means to us is the four years of mastering the Absolute Language, breaking the shells of our stereotyping seclusion. To one generation after another, AUBG means growing from a humble "stupid" freshman into a cutting-into-the-canteen-line senior hand in hand with people we previously thought to be from another planet. For us, the acronym A-U-B-G stands for Aaaaaaa! Awesome! Ask asl. Answer ASAP. Ah, Angela, Anguel, Anastasia, Atanas, Andrej, Andreia, ans960@, "Amigo, abstaining?!" An Aspirin after—aposteriori. Anthropology 101–-all A's. ABM, ad-hoc, Algiers, abdication—A’s again. Aspecter and airian--an attitude. Alkazelzer—all-time aid against Absolut Armageddon, Alt+F4. April. Away. Alt+Ctrl+Del. At
Underground--U2 unplugged. Ulcer--unavoidable. Unisex underwear--utterly unnoticeable. UDF—unifying utopia. Uninstalling UNIX? Unacceptable, undo. "Understand utility, UCC, unemployment, uncollectibles?" "Uh-huh." Unwashed
bus brings back Bachinovo, Bistritza. Break-up bashes, bends: Bewildered boyfriends babbles: "B-b-but..." "Bye, bambino." Bonjour, bachelor. Buddies beckon, beginning banichka baptism. Ben’s busy buying "Bankja", bananas. Bansko-Blagoevgrad-Borovetz. "Boje!": BUS 354 brought B-. Bragging 'bout bossoms, "Baaasi bebeto!...,"
girls grin. Gossip: "Gencho, Galia? Graffiti?" Giggles. Georgians greet: "Gamarjoba, genatsvale." Geniuses going gradschoolward: GMAT, GRE’s "gait, gall, gallivant, gregarious..." Geez! Graduation: goofy gowns, gaping grandparents. "Good gang, guys’n’gals. Go, govern!" Greece, Germany, Grenoble, Gabrovo. Gone.Gone? Never. Simply relocated. A friend of mine, who writes for a large newspaper in Bulgaria, complained to me once. "You know," she said, "you guys are everywhere." "How do you know it’s us?" I asked. Had she run across boastful AUBG pins, ties, t-shirts or framed diplomas, I wondered. "No, no. Somehow you all are different. Everywhere I go I spot one or two and then ask. Never got it wrong. It’s something in the eyes, if you know what I mean." I knew exactly what she meant. AUBG is in the hearts and the hearts require no shiny bronze. The eyes say it all. I remember walking down a London street once. As my eyes did the sightseeing part of the trip, they stumbled over a pair belonging to a thoughtful stranger. For a moment his stared at mine from under stylish glasses in quiet perplexity, then smiled as broad as the eyes can. The stranger passed by without uttering a word, without looking back, but by then I knew. He might not have been a leader of his region. Yet he was one of us, carrying AUBG, a symbolic 4 a.m. banichka in his heart around the world. He spoke the Language. Sofia, 2001Labels: english
Toilet Paper Packaging
source
A brief explanation for the non-Russian readers. Sguschionka is a generic name for sweetened condensed milk, so popular in the country that it has become an icon for Russian childhood. Although sguschionka is now manufactured by several different companies, most of them employ the classic blue can design to capitalize on the product's giant equity. Now toilet paper manufacturers are joining the fun. Condensed milk makers employ the classic design.Labels: english
CV: Assorted Gigs
As you are about to see, I truly excelled at tasks of ever increasing sophistication and responsibility over the years of climbing up the career ladder (before or apart from the full-time relevant experience). 1993. I think this is when I got my first hard-earned cash by translating (Romanian into English) and subtitling a documentary. The currency I was paid in doesn't exist any longer. See how it says "cupon" (coupon)? That's when Moldova got independent but didn't have enough money to print its own money, they printed these monopoly banknotes. I got paid ten of those. 1994. Sporadic English tutoring gigs. 1995-1996. A year in Kentucky saw me working as a stables hygeine executive (scooping horse poop on a farm) and later as a dish washer at a family restaurant. The dishwashing gig, in the hindsight, was one of my best jobs ever. Nothing beats a warm place that smells like good food. People who worked there were either pretty high school students or members of the local intelligentsia (we had a journalist cutting up salad, for example) with nothing better to do. At the end, they threw a nice retirement party and handed me a huge bunch of balloons. Priceless. 1996-1997. First "serious" job as a research assistant to a history prof in college transcribing taped interviews with American socialists. These interviews were later published in The Communist Party in Maryland, 1917-57. Summer of 1997. Counselor at a summer camp, looking over and entertaining a bunch of 12-13 year-old kids. Got a congratulatory pie for desinging a day-long massively multiplayer (about 200 people ages 8-16) outdoor war game that involved cache-hunting and shooting water guns. 1997-1998. More research assistanships and now also a resident assistant (RA) at a dorm that had been a Party (as in Communist Party) resort in the past. Very little direct cash value, but free room and board made it the best-paying job at the university. A suicide prevention training as a bragging-rights bonus. Summer of 1998. Bringing down the world's borders from the control room of the World Federalist Association in D.C. (their website at wfa.org is now something else). When making the world a better place failed to prove lucrative enough to pay the Dupont Circle rent, I took up a telemarketing gig (urgh), attempted a career as a time-share salesman, and worked at the dissemination department (gotta love the name) at a certain controversial religious organization. 1998-1999. More research jobs, this time for the political science department. Moved to RA a different dorm, another rebuilt Party hideout. Start of the media career - first wrote for and then managed a student newspaper called Vox that had a tomato for logo. It also was the only newspaper on campus that was not given away for free and ran ads by city businesses. Entirely self-sustainable, it was later converted into a life-style magazine.  Summer of 1999. The CV-building summer with a marketing internship at Procter & Gamble Balkans. 1999-2000. Vox, research and RA-ing, plus FlashNews, a student news weekly distributed by email. Started on my own with the first September issue; finished the year with some 15 people on the team. Some ads, but mostly power brokering. Seven years later, FlashNews is still doing well (although badly needs to have its website redesigned). 2000-2003. A full time job with Netage and almost no other gigs apart from random freelance writing, mostly for Sofia Echo, an expat newspaper. Fall of 2003. A three-month stint as a reporter for Reuters Bulgaria. Had to cover all sorts of government functions. Wasn't good at it and was relieved when we parted ways after the trial period. Mark this as a learning experience. First half of 2004. Another full-time job, this time with Grey Sofia, a local branch of the famous ad agency. No side gigs. 2004-2005. Ah, a student again. Began working at the dorm's reception desk and was promoted to the Desk Captain (no, seriously) after one term. Worked for two years at the MIT's skating rink as a skate guard and rental guy. Began blogging in October 2004. Summer of 2005. Intern at Fallon doing interactive strategy. 2005-2006. Desk and skating rink, teaching assistant, Convergence Culture Consortium, some freelance consulting. More blogging with nice AdSense revenue. Labels: english
CIA Sabotage Manual
 "In the early 1980s, the right-wing Reagan U.S. Government was determined to undermine or overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. As part of this campaign, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a small illustrated booklet in both Spanish and English designed to destabilise the Nicaraguan Government and economic system. It instructed dissaffected individuals on acts of sabotage they could carry out to this end." Labels: english
The Art of Enveloping
 "Sorting, collating, delivering junk mail is an inhuman, soul-crushing job-never-done. So: imagine their delight, consider the renewed sense of wonder conveyed to my local postmaster and staff when they encounter envelopes plastered with silly, subtle, crass, sublime, banal and bizarre visual non-sequiteurs. Two, three, sometimes four times a week — for well over fifteen years, now — I've received envelopes from Paul Di Filippo, invested with his unique sensibilities, his fascinating, strangely slapdash-AND-deft collage art." -- Paul Di Filippo Mail Art GalleriesLabels: english
Directory of Fictional Phone Numbers
Here's a very comprehensive directory of the fictional 555 phone numbers from movies and TV shows. Add to your Rolodex the contact for the Fight Club's Project Mayhem: 555-1534. Labels: english
Private Customized Adventures
 Do you remember movie The Game in which Michael Douglas character participates in a game that blends with life, designed by a company called Consumer Recreation Services? Well, there is a company that provides just these kind of services. "Hire us to manipulate your or someone else's day. Using characters and scenarios designed specifically for the targeted individual, we excel in making, or breaking someone's day." Labels: english
Guide to Marketing Magazines
A pretty comprehensive farm of links to generalistic marketing publications around the world by Tilburg University. Labels: english
Effects of News Photos on Brand Perception
One question that MIT Brand Lab is look at is how paparazzi pics of celebrities holding a particular product influence popular perception of this product. A related problem: what is the effect of the "bad news" pictures that happen to capture or revolve around a brand? Below: an Iraqi soldier wearing a Nike ski mask, an abandoned Coke truck at the WTC ground zero.   Labels: english
Mothers Against Peeing Standing Up
The Inherent Poetry of Advertising
Due to the nature of their business, advertisers view their campaigns one at a time, with little regard for how their production will be weaved into the cultural landscape once the ads hit the tube (this is not to say that copywriters don't rely on the landscape to produce the ads in the first place). The perception on the other side of the fence is rarely that fragmented. The corporate utterances pile onto each other, and not unlike the Poem of the Masses, they evolve into complex layered monologues that acquire new and perhaps unintended meanings. Many slogans come out as pre-canned poems already (Relax, it's FedEx), but others, too, have these magic characteristics, largely unrecognized, that unlock new poetic narratives when put together. Think of it as a conspiracy of a fridge poetry variety. An exclusive Corporate Poets Society, that's what it is. What follows is an attempt to put some of the pieces together. All verses except the very last batch are made entirely of corporate slogans. Many are quite famous, but if some of them don't seem familiar, consult the TagLine Guru and a Slogan Database. And if you find the poetry crappy, don't blame the messenger. ************* Where do you want to go today? Obey your thirst. Have it your way. Reach out, think outside the bun. Just do it. Prepare to own one. ************* Expect more, pay less, Tastes great, less filling. Flick my Bic, experience success. Got milk? Go get the feeling. ************* Let your fingers do the Dew, Invent the ultimate driving machine. You are due, definitely due. Think, but please don’t squeeze the Charmin. ************* Think different. Think small. I can't believe it's not butter. Mama mia, thatsa spicy meatball! ************* Friends don’t let friends melt in your mouth, not in your hands. ************* What happens here, stays here. Some of our best men are women - no fear. ************* The quicker picker-upper takes a licking and keeps on ticking - my wife. I think I’ll keep her. ************* More casino - more fun, Ask the man who owns one. ************* Live richly. Have a coke and smile. When you’ve got it, flaunt it. Be yourself for a while. ************* A diamond is not just for breakfast anymore. Hot. ************* We try harder. Nothing comes between me and my Calvins. Fun anyone? ************* Wassup?! Can you hear? Me? Now? In your mirror the objects are closer than they appear. ************* Finger-lickin' good connecting people think outside the box, share moments, share life, never follow, eat fresh, look sharp, feel sharp, think different, invent the way to fly. ************* I’d walk a mile for a camel And put a tiger in your tank. I really enjoy my flannel And also love a hearty spank. Labels: english
How Are You Feeling Today?
Front Page Evolution
 Comparative evolution of Yahoo's and Google's front pages. Click image to zoom in. -- via Jack Cheng
Labels: english
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